The Concours Run 2023 – Day 4: MBCV Concours

Today was the MBCV Concours event.   This was the show that we built this whole trip around.    I had wanted to attend this event for years, as I had always heard the standard of the cars was high.   It always looked like a big event and with more rare older cars than we get in NSW.

The event was held at Wandin East Reserve.   Wandin East is a semi-rural area on Melbourne’s eastern outskirts.   The reserve is a good place to have the event as there is plenty of room to park all the cars, and set up the various stalls.     The weather started a bit overcast and foggy, but it soon cleared up and it turned out to be a lovely day.

Our hotel was about 45 minutes from the event.   Our drive there was rather scenic, and we grabbed some breakfast close the MBCV Concours event,  before arranging our cars in order of age (oldest first) and driving in.   MBCV had provided a row for the NSW visitors (us), so we wanted to have our cars properly arranged.

We arrived at 8:30AM, and the event was already about one third full.   The cars kept coming, there we still even new arrivals after 11:30AM.   There must have been at least 180 cars, all Mercedes-Benz and mostly classics.

We all agreed the show was excellent.   There was more variety than we see in NSW, and overall the standard of presentation was higher.   There are less rare and unusual cars in NSW, but more concentration of specific models.     At the MBCV concours, they had a Gullwing, more pontons, a 170 and various other interesting cars.

It was good to see three W111 cabriolets on display.   It almost made me wish I had brought mine.     The two 280SE 3.5 cabriolets were very nice.

As well as seeing the cars, It was also great to meet a few MBCV members I knew from the various facebook groups and forums.   it’s nice to put faces to names after so many years.

The MBCV Concours was extremely well organized, and I really enjoyed it.   We stayed until 12:30 and could have stayed a few hours more if we didn’t have to get on the road to head back to Sydney.